Will the Real John Engler Please Stand Up?

Eminem being praised by conservatives is an amusing turn, but in this case the substance of the issue overwhelms the irony. Henry Payne writes in NRO today about how well 8 Mile portrayed the "infamous urban nightmare" of Detroit. Yes, it's a city with two large, daily newspapers. But:

"The results of [Great Society social] policies are everywhere. Detroit, Michigan's largest city with 970,000 people, has only one movie theater, the Phoenix on Eight Mile (where a man was shot in the stomach on the film's opening night). It does not contain a single large retail store. Not one. Detroiters must travel to neighboring Dearborn to find a Sears or a Marshall's. Seventy percent of children are born into single-parent households. Kids walking to school along Hamilton Avenue on the city's west side or John R Road on the east side — just to use two of numerous examples — pass rows of abandoned buildings (an estimated 10,700 dot the city), dope addicts and criminals often lurking inside. On the city's main street, Woodward Avenue, teenagers serve Popeye's and McDonald's kid's meals from behind bulletproof glass."

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